News: 2021 Archives
Video: Bruce Schneier on Regulating at the Pace of Tech
Cyber security expert Bruce Schneier talks about regulation, market failure, and what keeps him up at night
Video: Click Here to Kill Everybody
Watch the Video on YouTube.com
Lucas Cardiell interviews Bruce Schneier on his book Click Here to Kill Everybody.
Video: Who’s Controlling the Internet?
Watch the Video or Listen to the Audio on ToSaveTheWorld.ca
Bruce Schneier teaches cyber security policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. He points out that in cyber crime, offence is far easier than defence. Too often, victims of phishing are blamed, whereas legal reforms are needed that will hold manufacturers responsible for defects in their software. The public’s vulnerability is increasing, especially with the rise of the Internet of Things, for many of the computer-controlled gadgets we own cannot even be repaired. Before we can use a new product, we generally have to click (without reading) a long statement that exempts the producer for any liability for its failings. Countries differ in their regulations, and it is unlikely that Russia, China, or even the US will agree to any international norms that restrict the advantages they may possess seek to acquire. It is legal for Facebook or any other privately-owned platform to refuse to advertise, even if this seriously limits freedom of speech about political and social issues. No one can predict how serious the threats may be for the future development of Artificial Intelligence, but Schneier takes the matter seriously and respects those who are working to limit the potential damage…
Bruce Schneier’s book Secrets and Lies
Everyone who needs to understand or implement cryptographic algorithms reads Bruce Schneier’s Applied Cryptography. In that cookbook for cryptographers, it’s a matter of faith that deep mathematics, properly understood and cleverly arranged, can make three interrelated guarantees regarding digital communication:
- Confidentiality. Because messages are encrypted, nobody but the sender and the intended recipients can read them.
- Authenticity. Because messages are signed, nobody can impersonate anyone else.
- Integrity. Because messages are signed, nobody can tamper with them undetectably…
Audio: Click Here To Kill Everybody
Listen to the Audio on Libsyn.com
In early 2021, hackers infiltrated the software that controlled the city’s water supply in Oldsmar, Florida. Through dumb luck, they caught the intrusion shortly after the hacker tried to poison the city’s water.
This hack was part of a growing array of attacks against the Internet of Things, objects that used to operate offline but are now connected to the internet—and therefore vulnerable to hacking. From Wi-Fi enabled tea kettles to cars that can be taken over remotely to knocking power out for entire countries using smart thermostats, the risks are everywhere. We’re just lucky there hasn’t been an Internet of Things attack that has been on the scale of 9/11 or Hiroshima—yet…
Bruce Schneier: We Are Asking the Wrong Cybersecurity Questions
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, called a “security guru” by The Economist. He is the author of over one dozen books—including his latest, “We Have Root” —as well as hundreds of articles, essays, and academic papers. His influential newsletter “Crypto-Gram” and his blog “Schneier on Security” are read by over 250,000 people. He has testified before Congress, is a frequent guest on television and radio, has served on several government committees, and is regularly quoted in the press.
Schneier is a fellow at the …
Audio: Secure Ventures Podcast
Listen to the Audio on Apple.com
Bruce Schneier appeared on the podcast Secure Ventures with Kyle McNulty.
Audio: Going Meta: A Conversation and AMA with Bruce Schneier
Listen to the Audio on TheCyberWire.com
In this episode, Perry Carpenter interviews cybersecurity guru Bruce Schneier. Perry and Bruce explore how cybersecurity is about so much more than technology—It’s about people, so we benefit by taking a multidisciplinary approach.
In preparing for this interview, Perry solicited his LinkedIn network to see what questions people had for Bruce. This is a wide ranging conversation covering everything from Bruce’s thoughts on cybersecurity’s “first principles” to the impact that the pandemic had on society to need for regulation to help raise the overall standards for security and privacy…
Audio: The Coming AI Hackers. How Will They Put Society At Risk?
Listen to the Audio on SoundCloud.com
Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist, author, fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this episode, he joins host Hillarie McClure to discuss his latest research and paper “The Coming AI Hackers.”
Audio: The Coming AI Hackers
Listen to the Audio on HBR.org
AI hackers are coming, and it’s not just our computer networks at risk – our laws and regulations are also vulnerable. Bruce Schneier, internationally renowned security technologist and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, joins Azeem Azhar to explore how humans have always exploited loopholes in rule-based systems, and how that will change as AIs become more powerful.
They also discuss:
- Why making AI systems easier to monitor and regulate also makes them less powerful.
- Why we need mechanisms for agile policy response when legislation and regulation get hacked…
Audio: The Next Phase in Cyber Warfare
Listen to the Audio on TheRedLinePodcast.com
With each major technological leap forward in warfare the rules of war also change. Today’s challenge is Cyber Warfare, which has completely thrown out the conventional concept of the first strike. With tens of thousands of attacks occurring each day from all of the major players, we look at the landscape of cyber warfare and ask whether any nation can truly be prepared to defend itself.
Part 4: Free For All (1:01:12)
- Bruce Schneier looks at the difference between cyberattacks and cyber warfare – the former we see every day, the latter we have not yet really seen…
When AI Becomes the Hacker
Bruce Schneier explores the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) systems gone rogue in society.
For the past couple of years, renowned technologist and researcher Bruce Schneier has been researching how societal systems can be hacked, specifically the rules of financial markets, laws, and the tax code. That led him to his latest examination of the potential unintended consequences of artificial intelligence on society: how AI systems themselves, which he refers to as “AIs,” could evolve such that they automatically – and inadvertently – actually abuse societal systems.
“It’s AIs as the hacker,” he says, rather than hackers hacking AI systems…
Book Review: We Have Root
By Bruce Schneier. John Wiley & Sons; Wiley.com; 304 pages; $19.99.
Bruce Schneier has been one of the most recognized authorities on cybersecurity for more than two decades. He has a talent for explaining the complexities of the cyber world to the layman without resorting to intimidating technical discourse. While sharing his extensive knowledge, he admits that he too continues to learn the ways of the cyber world.
A compilation of Schneier’s essays, We Have Root describes the heightened risk of cyber activity due to public policy and other timely issues, including election interference, privacy and surveillance, access to encrypted information, and leaks. Not surprisingly, the collection of separately published articles involves the frequent repetition of particular themes, which may be seen as a waste of time by some or a useful emphasis of key points by others. The single most useful piece, addressing a number of emerging potential threats, may be “Security and the Internet of Things,” which explains how some simple, everyday actions could result in death and destruction…
Bruce Schneier Wants You to Make Software Better
Producing effective code means understanding more than just programming
Security technologist Bruce Schneier has a warning: “What you code affects the world now. Gone are the days when programmers could ignore the social context of what they code, when we could say, ‘The users will just figure it all out.’ Today, programs, apps, and algorithms affect society. Facebook’s choices influence democracy. How driverless cars will choose to avoid accidents will affect human lives.”
Schneier should know, because synthesizing and explaining the impact of technology is what he does. “I work at the intersection of security, technology, and people, mostly thinking about security and privacy policy . I don’t have a single job,” says Schneier. “Instead, I do a portfolio of related things.”…
Video: Data, Surveillance & Internet Security with Bruce Schneier
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The recent Russian hack is just a reminder of the continued importance of internet security and how vulnerable we are as a society to ongoing breaches. Audrey Kurth Cronin, Director of American University’s Center for Security, Innovation and New Technology (CSINT), had an in-depth discussion with internationally renowned security technologist, Bruce Schneier as a part of the CSINT Conversations series. Schneier is a public-interest technologist, fellow and lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School, a board member of EFF, and the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc. Together they discussed the topics of data, surveillance, and internet security, including the recent government hack. Professor Cronin also fielded questions submitted by our attendees during this live session…
Video: Artificial Intelligence in Politics
Watch the Video on Unpublished.vote
Artificial intelligence. The emergence of the technology which allows machines to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence.
What could go wrong?
Many of us were twigged to the notion of artificial intelligence with the investigation into Cambridge Analytica and it’s impact on the election. While artificial intelligence will soon give us self driving vehicles, there is a growing skepticism of applying it in the political realm or public policy making. Politicians consistently rank near the bottom of the list when it comes to being respected. What if A.I could improve on that?…
Cybersecurity: Same Threats, New Challenges
The pandemic created opportunities for hackers to exploit old vulnerabilities in new ways.
For business leaders, 2020 was many things. A test. A catalyst. An opportunity.
For chief information security officers (CISOs), it was all of these things at once—with the security of the business hanging in the balance. This was especially true when it came to the rapid shift to remote work.
The vulnerabilities of working from home were known before the shift—insecure personal devices, weak passwords on home devices—but not always prioritized. Other threats were given new life, such as phishing attacks that exploited Covid’s chaos to trick beleaguered employees. And some threats were unique to cloud technology itself…
Bruce Schneier on Technology Security, Social Media, and Regulation
GrowthPolicy. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, you write: “American democracy is an information system, in which the information isn’t bits and bytes but citizens’ beliefs. […] When you really need to worry is when insiders go bad. And that is precisely what is happening in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.” What advice would you offer policy makers seeking to safeguard future elections from disinformation campaigns undertaken by bad inside actors?
Bruce Schneier: We need to break up the tech monopolies. Companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google wield enormous power in the market, and by extension in politics. Decentralization brings security, and the world would be much safer if there were twenty smaller Amazons and Facebooks and Googles than one of each. So we need both smaller companies and the ability to move, delete, combine, and reuse data from a variety of companies. Enforcing existing antitrust laws will make an enormous difference in how these companies affect society. And in areas where decentralization doesn’t make sense—when we have natural monopolies—we need to treat them like the utilities they are…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.